The Bamboo Temple sits in a wooded valley in the hills north-west of Kunming, an hour or so from the centre, and it is one of the most enjoyable religious sites in the province. Its history goes back a long way - a monastery was founded here in the Tang or Song period and it was rebuilt in the Yuan - but its reputation rests on sculpture made in the late nineteenth century, and specifically on a single hall of five hundred figures.
The five hundred arhats
In Buddhist tradition the arhats are the disciples who attained enlightenment and remained in the world to protect the teaching; groups of five hundred of them, in painting or sculpture, are common in Chinese temples, and most are conventional. The Bamboo Temple's are not. They were modelled in clay in the 1880s and 1890s by a sculptor from Sichuan, working with a small team, and they are close to life size, individually characterised and often startlingly natural: figures yawning, scratching, arguing, laughing, nursing a child, leaning out over the railing of the gallery to look at the visitors below, one with a shoe half off and a face full of self-satisfaction. Several are portraits of the sculptors themselves and of people from the streets of Kunming. Nothing quite like them exists elsewhere in Chinese Buddhist sculpture, and they are the reason the temple is known abroad.
The rest of the temple
The monastery around the hall is a standard hillside arrangement of courtyards, halls and galleries, with ancient trees, a stream and a small bamboo grove - the tree that gave the temple its name grows in the courtyard. There are images and steles of earlier date, and the setting among cypress and pine gives the place a calm that survives the coach parties. It is a working temple and monks live there, so parts are closed to visitors at times.
Practical notes
The Bamboo Temple is about half an hour by road from central Kunming, in the hills towards the Western Hills scenic area, and can be combined with the Golden Temple, which lies in the same range, or with the Dragon Gate and the Western Hills, which are further on. It charges a modest admission and is open daily during daylight hours; the arhat hall is the last thing to close. Allow an hour and a half, and take your time over the figures - most people spend far longer in that one hall than in the rest of the complex.
